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Anyone STILL having heart rate accuracy issues with their Fenix 6?

9374082
over 4 years ago

Hi all,

Super frustrated, but I am still having issues with my Fenix 6S and heart rate accuracy even with the 4.20 software update. I'm wondering if it's just me or what the deal is? I had a 5S Plus before this and had no issues doing the same activities so I really don't think it's user error. My heart rate hardly reads over 110 during really vigorous exercise when my heart rate is closer to 160+. I have tried wearing on the inside of my wrist, tried my other wrist with no luck. It consistently reads 80-110 bpm the whole time. I wouldn't have bothered to upgrade if I knew this was going to be an issue. I know that wearing a chest strap is the most accurate, but I don't like to have to wear it for all of my work outs and my old Fenix was totally fine as well as my apple watch before that. Any suggestions? 

  • 0 over 4 years ago in reply to iLikePotatoes

    I think it's not about the grip but impact every time you hit the ski pole to the snow. It moves watch.

  • 0 over 4 years ago in reply to jarivee

    I would say it's not very much different compared to running which also causes the watch to move when your foot hits the ground and arm is moving at the same time.

    It's the low HR issue, Garmin just can't admit the problem.

  • 0 over 4 years ago in reply to jarivee

    I don't think this can be an issue.
    If you compare to a sweaty arm bouncing when you are running, trail running, using ski poles shouldn't be an issue at all.
    Also, usualy, when you ski, you have a winter jacket and gloves/mitts, so the watch won't probably move at all.
    Also, on alpine skiing, poles shouldn't be hit that hard.
    On backcountry or cross-country, the strap in the hand will take most of the pressure, the wrist shouldn't bounce that much.

  • 0 over 4 years ago

    Had my Fenix 6 Ti for a few weeks now. I skate ski a lot each week. Initial average HR per session using only the wrist based HR showed an average of about 105 bpm. I've trained enough with a chest HR monitor to know what 105 feels like and I knew this was low. My last strap died over 5 years ago, so I thought that it was time to purchase another. Went out today with the new chest strap, and skied my usual loop. This time the HR numbers matched with my perceived effort - 142bpm average and 164 bpm max. Pretty pathetic that the wrist based HR is off so much that it's not usable. I don't mind wearing a strap for maximum accuracy, but I do expect better accuracy with the wrist based sensors. I'm wearing it correctly, and wearing it tightly against my wrist. It just doesn't report meaningful numbers for hard aerobic activity.

  • 0 over 4 years ago

    I was just using ergometer and while it showed 100-110 bpm average (taking it from handle bars), my Fenix 6x pro solar was showing 60-65 bpm OHR on watch mode. So way too low reading.

    There really is something totally wrong with bpm on watch mode.

  • 0 over 4 years ago

    The WHR is bad on the Fenix 6. I went to Orangetheorie today for a 1 h full body workout. I used the "Cardio" program on the Fenix. My BPM went up to 200 and hovered between 150 and 200 for a full hour which is totally non-sense. I had minutes of recovery walks and the optical HR monitor from OTF showed a maximal heart rate of 160 and recovery HR of 130 how it should be. Both are optical heart rate monitors and I wore the one from OTF on the same arm just above the watch.

  • 0 over 4 years ago

    Had the hr accuracy problem : too high hr while running gave me a bas vo2 max. then i tightened my strap, and now the hr value is spot on comparee to my apple watch on the other whist. 

  • 0 over 4 years ago

    hi, do you have still the same issue? Also wither latest firmeware (beta)?

  • +1 over 4 years ago

    Just wading into this. Have been having the same issues over the last few weeks. Noticed it whilst hiking. Strenuous uphill hiking at a strong pace (can hear my heart exploding out my chest through my ears) but HR on the 6X wouldn't top 90.

    Then ran a few tests with the elliptical to compare it against my Polar H10 chest strap (where it actually started dropping as I intensified efforts):

    Then against the 5X I upgraded from:

    And then yesterday took it for a normal tracked run. Interestingly, it almost mirrored the HR my 5X was showing UNTIL I ended the run. The HR immediately dropped down to ~80 while my 5X tracked a slow decline from the 170 I'd reached. From my perspective, the issues seem to be:

    1. Failure to track HR properly outside of activities when the heart rate is not resting and is elevated;
    2. Failure to track HR properly during certain recorded activities - hiking, indoor elliptical cross-trainer etc.;
    3. Failure to track HR properly even in a relative sense - i.e. it's off, but it's not relatively off. It increases when it should decrease, it decreases when it should increase and it maintains an inconsistent trend difference with the chest-strap-known actual HR letalone an inconsistent magnitude difference.

    Garmin's response to me was:

    "We have added you into an open investigation which will be used to determine the cause of this issue. Using the information provided they will test and reach a suitable resolution which will then be supplied to you directly by email.

    We cannot provide a time frame for this process as it depends on what is discovered during the investigation and what is required to resolve the issue.

    Any updates will come to you directly via email as an affected user of this case."

    I will be reasonable and give the techs a chance to analyse everything I've sent them and all the data but this does look like a fairly big ***-up in the software/firmware.

    Having seen that this thread has been going for almost 6 months, I'm not enthused with the chances of a resolution and given that in three weeks I head off on a 6-month trekking and hiking trip around three continents, I'm pretty annoyed. I was knocked back with the request that I be given a replacement just to see if that solves anything while they check the data. The watch is a month old.